Yves Mamou : France: The Taboo of Muslim Racism and Anti-Semitism

France: The Taboo of Muslim Racism and Anti-Semitism

Since Bensoussan rejected
"any idea of destiny or essentialization," the judges denied any
possibility that he could "be accused of having aroused or wished to
arouse a feeling of hostility or rejection against a group of people
[Muslims]".

The Islamist CCIF said it would appeal the decision.

It is becoming more and more difficult in France to hide the fact
that hate speech and anti-Semitic statements are coming mainly not from
non-Muslims, but from French Muslims.

On January 25, 2017, all of France's "anti-racist" organizations --
even the Jewish International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism
(LICRA) -- joined the Islamist Collective Against Islamophobia (CCIF) in
court against Bensoussan. He was prosecuted for remarks he made in
October 2015, during a debate on radio station France Culture about
anti-Semitism among French Arabs. Benoussan said:

"An Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, with great
courage, just said in a documentary aired on Channel 3: It is a shame to
deny this taboo, namely that in the Arab families in France, and
everyone knows it but nobody wants to say it, anti-Semitism is sucked
with mother's milk."

The Islamist CCIF send the quote to the public prosecutor, who opened
a case against Bensoussan. The charge was simple: "mother's milk" was
not a metaphor for cultural anti-Semitism transmitted through education,
but a genetic and "essentialist" accusation. "Mother's milk", they
claimed, means: "all Arabs are anti-Semitic" -- in other words, that
Bensoussan supposedly a racist.
The decision of the court to acquit of Bensoussan is a key moment for
freedom of speech in France in general, and for the freedom to speak
about Muslim anti-Semitism in France.

The judges said
that "the impugned remarks [of Bensoussan] were held in a very
particular context" -- a radio debate on a hot topic, "in the heat of
conversation". The judges recognized that the quotation of Smaïn Laacher
by the defendant was not strictly accurate. Laacher said:

"it is a monumental hypocrisy not to see that this
anti-Semitism is in the beginning domestic, and quite evidently, is
without doubt reinforced, hardened, legitimized, almost naturalized with
various distinctions... externally. He will find it at home and will
sense no radical lack of continuity between home and the external
environment. Because the external environment, is, in reality, the most
often [experienced]. It is to be found in what are termed the ghettos,
it feels as though it is in the air one breathes, it is not at all
strange. And it is difficult to escape from it in those places,
particularly when you find it in yourself."

According to the judges, however, "the idea expressed by Smaïn
Laacher is almost the same, or even identical to that expressed by
Georges Bensoussan."
"Lastly and above all," according to the court, "the offense of
incitement to hatred, violence or discrimination presupposes to be
constituted, an intentional element," and the characterization of this
intent is lacking and "runs against the fact that Georges Bensoussan...
never ceased to deplore this constitution of two separate peoples
[Muslims and non-Muslims in France]... and never called for a separation
of the faction [Muslims] supposed to have seceded, its rejection, its
banishment or its eradication, but on the contrary, [Bensoussan called]
for their reintegration into the French nation."

Since Bensoussan rejected "any idea of destiny or essentialization,"
the judges denied any possibility that he could "be accused of having
aroused or wished to arouse a feeling of hostility or rejection against a
group of people [Muslims]".
The Islamist CCIF said it would appeal the decision.

It is becoming more and more difficult in France to hide the fact
that hate speech and anti-Semitic statements are coming mainly not from
non-Muslims, but from French Muslims.
=========

Meklat's tweets, threatening
women, gay celebrities and Jews, were shared by around a million on
social networks. Then whole country discovered what the most
"integrated" young Muslims had on their minds.

The scandal is not that "Divines" might be considered a hate film
against France, against public schools, against police, against
firemen, against the presentation of migrants and Muslims as eternal
victims. The heroes in the movie are all suffering young Muslims,
targets of a racist French society; nobody understands the beauty of
their souls, etc. The scandal is that Houda Benyamina shared on Facebook
a cartoon saying that Israel and the United States are manipulating
ISIS.

"We forget by the way that for a significant proportion of the
Muslim community, homophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny are part of
their cultural background." — Pascal Bruckner, speaking about Mehdi
Meklat, Le Figaro.

In France last month, riots spread -- not only to Aulnay sous Bois
and other suburbs of Paris in Seine Saint Denis, such as Le
Tremblay-en-France, Villepinte, Bobigny, Torcy -- but farther, to
Argenteuil (Val d'Oise), Mantes la Jolie (Yvelines), Grigny, Les Ulis,
Lille (northern France), Marseille (southern France), Dijon (Burgundy)
and, of course, right to the heart of Paris.
How many million euros of goods, shops, cars and buses were destroyed? Nobody knows. The daily Le Parisien published a confidential police memo saying
that between February 7 and February 11, in Seine-Saint-Denis alone,
200 cars were burned, 160 garbage trucks were burned, hundreds of
projectiles were thrown, 40 fireworks were fired at police, and 108
people were arrested.

Muslim Antisemitism: Hate Speech

Amid these riots, three other "explosions" took place.Mehdi Meklat and Badroudine Said Abdallah affair.
Mehdi Meklat and Badroudine Said Abdallah were until very recently, two
cultural heroes. These two young Muslims were the darlings of the left
mainstream media.[1]
In March 2016, they even had the honor of an article in The Washington Post:

"At 23, they are already celebrities, France's youngest
public intellectuals.... neither sees the point of a university
education, and their world begins where Paris ends, which is the point
of their entire intellectual project.
"Their columns for the Liberation newspaper's Bondy Blog, their
documentaries and their 2015 novel all reveal the two friends'
overarching intent: showing the world the complicated reality of the
Paris suburbs where they were born and raised."

Badroudine Said Abdallah (left) and Mehdi Meklat (right), featured on the cover of the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, on February 1, 2017.

But in mid-February 2017, an unknown woman decided to share on Facebook some of Mehdi Meklat's tweets:
"I am going to slit your throat Muslim-style" read a tweet
threatening Marine Le Pen. Another called for "Hitler to kill all the
Jews", while a third said he wanted to "rape" former Charlie Hebdo
editor-in-chief Charb, one of the victims of the January 2015 terror
attacks, with a "Laguiole knife". Meklat also tweeted that he wanted to
sodomize Brigitte Bardot with light bulbs.
Meklat's tweets were shared by around a million people on social
networks. Then whole country discovered what the most "integrated" young
Muslims had on their minds.
For nearly five years, it turned out (most of the time, under a
pseudonym), Mehdi Meklat multiplied the homophobic, anti-Semitic,
misogynist, offensive messages to certain personalities or was busy
advocating terrorism. None of his tweets attacked, for instance, ISIS.
The targets were all women, gay celebrities and Jews. When the scandal
of his racist and anti-Semitic tweets began to explode on February 16,
2017, Meklat deleted more than 50,000 tweets in one night.
Meklat today lives outside France; he says he fears for his life.Houda Benyamina and Oulaya Amamra: Facebook posts and tweets.
The French-Moroccan film-maker Houda Benyamina received a standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival and won the Camera D'Or prize
for her film, "Divines". In February 2017, the very politically correct
Académie des Césars (the French equivalent of Hollywood's Oscars)
rewarded Houda Benyamina with a César for "Divines" as the Best First
Film. The scandal is not that "Divines" might be considered a hate film
against France, against public schools, against police, against firemen,
against the presentation of migrants and Muslims as eternal victims.
The heroes in the movie are all suffering young Muslims, targets of a
French racist society; nobody understands the beauty of their souls,
etc. The scandal is that Houda Benyamina shared on Facebook a cartoon
saying that Israel and the United States are manipulating ISIS.
Oulaya Amamra, the young sister of Houda Benyamina, awarded by the
Académie des Césars the prize for Best Young Actress in "Divines", was
pictured posing with Mehdi Meklat. Like him, she frenetically deleted
dozens of racist and homophobic tweets featuring terms like "dirty nigger".
Amamra did not apologize. She just said: "sorry, I was young".

Oulaya Amara (left) posing with Mehdi Meklat (center).

Yacine Chaouat
On February 25, the Paris prosecutor launched an inquiry into Yacine
Chaouat, a parliamentary assistant of the Socialist Party senator Roger
Madec. Chaouat was suspected of sharing on Facebook some posts
expressing "sympathy" for ISIS. "If the facts are true, they are
disturbing. We're very clearly about apologizing for terrorism", said a source close to the investigation at the weekly L'Express. In Le Parisien, Chaouat replied he was the victim of a smear campaign.
In 2015, Chaouat had to resign from a nomination to be a member of
the National Secretary of the Socialist Party: some of his colleagues
suggested that Chaouat was justly condemned, because he had severely beaten his girlfriend.

Not all but...

Of course, not all Muslims living in French suburbs are anti-Semitic,
violent, racist or homophobic. More importantly, the Mehdi Meklat and
Houda Benyamina tweet scandal highlights the responsibility of
mainstream media of the Left, who have chosen to turn a blind eye to
their "protégés".
The French writer Pascal Bruckner, speaking about Mehdi Meklat, wrote in Le Figaro:

"For years, Le Monde, Liberation, Les Inrockuptibles, Télérama
praised the great vitality of this kid from the suburbs, so funny, so
smart that he proposed, through the voice of his "double evil" [a
pseudonym of Meklat] to kill Jews, to sodomize Mrs. Valls [the prime
minister's wife], spit on Charb [murdered in the Charlie Hebdo
terrorist attack], to break the legs of Finkielkraut [noted
philosopher]... The media wanted to deny the violence of kids from the
suburbs or try to make it seem the natural expression of an oppressed
minority. We forget, by the way, that for a significant proportion of
the Muslim community, homophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny are part of
their cultural background."

All of this happened while, in January 2017, the great, Moroccan-born historian Georges Bensoussan appeared in court for having said on radio that anti-Semitism was transmitted in many Muslim families with "mother's milk".
It is to the credit of the French court that last week, Bensoussan
was acquitted of "hate speech". Not surprisingly, the prosecutor has
announced that the state will appeal the verdict.

Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily, Le Monde, before his retirement.

[1]Liberation, Les Inrocks, Telerama, Le Monde, the public radio station France Inter.
Their novels were published by the prestigious publishing house Le
Seuil; they were hosted as columnists on the France Inter radio station.
Meklat and "Badrou" had the honor of the Front Page of the trendy
magazine Les InRockuptibles with Christiane Taubira, ex-minister of Justice of François Hollande.

Subscribe To

Followers

Fair Use Notice

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available in an effort to advance awareness and understanding of issues relating to civil rights, religious tolerance, economics, individual rights, international affairs, liberty, science & technology, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.